the musings of a free-spirited young woman dedicated to giving her soul a voice

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Lessons from the Pied Piper

The oldest picture of the Pied Piper as copied from the glass window of Marktkirche in Hamelin by Freiherr Augustin von Moersperg, circa 1300.

Growing up, I first discovered the story of the Pied Piper in the Brothers Grimm book my parents presented to my sister and me when we were young. In it, we learned that the Piper was called to rid a village of its rats by playing his magical pipe. Upon doing so, the villagers refused to pay him, prompting the Piper to lead away their children in an act of vengeance.

Recently, I circled back to the Pied Piper story as I was reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes's "Women Who Run with the Wolves" in an attempt to view the story through the lens of Jungian archetypes. Estes does not tell the story of the Pied Piper, choosing instead to share the Hans Christian Andersen story entitled "The Red Shoes".

In the story, a young girl falls in love with a pair of red shoes and begins to think of them above all else. In time, she meets a man who slaps the soles of the shoes (other versions feature a piper which lulls them into action with his music) which launches them into continuous motion. The young girl cannot take them off and is resigned to a life spent in servitude to her dancing shoes. One day she finds herself so weary that she begs an executioner to cut off her feet so as to be free from the cursed shoes and, as a result, spends the rest of her life as a cripple.

Estes introduces the story as a cautionary tale designed to teach young women the importance of cherishing one's soul worth and one's life's path and why it is so crucial to resist those who might try to seduce, threaten and rob one of it.

Continuing my reading of Estes's work, I appreciated how she was able to dissect each story and expose the Jungian archetypes at play, including the seductive Piper.

The Pied Piper is a powerful archetype and can be incredibly destructive if one never learns to stop the enchanting music he weaves (don't mean to pick on men...can be seen in women, too). The Piper will work to lull you to music which is not your own, seducing you to follow a path which is not your, and if you heed the call, could ultimately drive you to exhaustion and a crippled soul. Whew! I consider it one of the most dangerous archetypes out there. Still, on the flip side, the Piper can also serve as a powerful teacher by reminding you to honor your sacred contracts in life, relinquishing them for no one and no thing.

I've met the Piper in my own life and the meeting will forever stay with me because I came very close to entering into a life not meant for me, even though it sounded so pretty. I don't regret the encounter because I learned much from it, most importantly that I had a sacred contract somewhere else that I couldn't explain but had to follow. And the courage to walk away from someone else's music to follow my own has led me to a rich life with deep soul blessings.

The additional lesson of the Piper is this: you can't blame the Piper for choosing to follow his/her pretty music and giving up your power in the process. You can't cry "victim" but you can begin to claim responsibility for having a need to follow the Piper in the first place. My hunch is that it has much to do with not accepting one's soul contracts in life, even if they don't feel comfortable at first.

Caroline Myss has done some incredible work on breaking down archetypal patterns in her book "Sacred Contracts". In fact, I believe that sometimes we come into contact with others who remind us of the value of our own lives and the contracts we have undertaken, even if there is some pain involved. Pain, methinks, is the reminder that there is dis-ease afoot and lessons to be learned.

So, in my own life, I've met the Piper and learned some powerful lessons that forever changed me. The music stopped before any permanent damage was done and I find that I've embraced my life's purpose with more vigor than I had before. The Piper was the most dangerous figure/archetype I've ever met, leaving me with gratitude for the experience. I was lucky -- it was only a brush with the archetype and nothing more. In the end, my life was revolutionized and fruit grows where there once was much pain.

One Thing: Be Brave

About Me

I feel very much rooted in the earth, but my friends and family describe my personality as "free spirited." It is good to be free spirited and wholly alive, methinks, swimming in the flow until fingers get pruney and one's soul feels saturated and content. Life is a mystery to be cherished and traveled. I like to eat good food. Soak up Nature's beauty. Laugh in the company of good people. Drum at pickup music sessions. Feel lamb's ear and pine and lavender and sage between my fingers. Count the stars in the sky and watch satellites whiz by in their orbits. I like listening to the old ones and absorbing their stories that always manage to sound fresh. I feel honored when the Muse sits and visits and the dreams that dance me into other realms at night. The synchronicities that lead my way each day, always making me feel like Alice. And the quiet that can be heard in the desert and on the shore and in the trees.

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Quotes To Live By In 2012

“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow if polluted; we manage that. The river does not dry up; we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

I can tell you that it takes great strength to surrender. You have to know that you are not going to collapse. Instead, you are going to open to a power that you don't even know, and it is going to come to meet you. In the process of healing, this is one of the huge things that I have discovered. People recognized the energy coming to meet them. When they opened to another energy, a love, a divine love, came through to meet them. That is what is known as grace. We all sing about amazing grace. It is a gift.

I think that it comes through the work that we do. For some people, it can come out of the blue, but I know that in my own situation, the grace came through incredible vigilance.